One of the most
horrifying testimonies from the horrors of the Holocaust was left by a
conscience-stricken SS officer, Kurt
Gerstein, who visited the deathcamps Belzec and Treblinka in August
1942 and witnessed the mass gassing of Jewish men, women and children. Gerstein
was shocked by what he had seen and eventually risked his life to inform
the Allies.

He described how the
Jews were forced to undress, the piles of shoes were allegedly 25 meters
high, the women's hair was cut off, the naked Jews were driven between
two barbed wire fences to the gas chambers. Kurt Gerstein desperately
tried to alert the world about the atrocities. After the war he wrote
down his evidence on May 26, 1945:

"The
train stopped, and 200 Ukrainians, who were forced to perform this
service, tore open the doors and chased the people from the carriages
with whips. Then instructions were given through a large loudspeaker:
The people are to take off all their clothes out of doors and a few of
them in the barracks, including artificial limbs and glasses. Shoes must
be tied in pairs with a little piece of string handed out by a small
four-year-old Jewish boy. All valuables and money are to be handed in at
the window marked "Valuables," without any document or receipt
being given.